I gave my nephew, a huge Star Wars nerd, all three seasons of TOS for Christmas. He's about to finish Season 3. He called me to tell me how childish he thinks Star Wars is compared to this show that's approaching 50 years old.

It constantly annoys me how often scifi substitutes technobabble for strategy, logic and thought. TOS did it too but STII stood out for not doing so. Do you win because you have a 1% chance and you are the hero or do you win because you really know your stuff, have a smart plan and understand your enemy enough to exploit his mistakes? Too many choose path 1 and it makes for crappy movies.

AdamK:Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

FirstNationalBastard:Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

Confabulat:AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

No fair on the Voyager and Enterprise, they both sucked for a lot more reasons then their lack of compelling characters :P

Confabulat:AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

FirstNationalBastard:MusicMakeMyHeadPound: thornhill: But let's all be real; Wrath of Khan is all about Khan.

Uh, no. It's all about Kirk getting old and his refusal to accept the inevitability of death.

It's Horatio Hornblower in space.

Which was a novel concept and done quite well.

It's just slightly annoying to me that every sci-fi movie, tv show and videogame thereafter treats space battles like tallship skirmishes.

Which is farked up, because in Khan, they used all three dimensions of space during the battle, not just one dimensional head on tactics.

I am almost finished watching the final season of BSG (so I'm a little behind), and I have to say that I appreciate the show's attempts to use hard science fiction. There was one battle scene between the Galactica and a base star or two where Adama orders the ship to roll to the side so it can basically protect one flank while trying to expose the base star's side. It was a few seconds of dialogue, but it did seem to disobey the rule that the starships have to be pointed at one another and a few yards apart before they start firing.

Confabulat:About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

I don't know about Abrams, but I agree with the first part. Scotty never wasted five minutes explaining how he was going to reconfigure the shields, and send a beam of subatomic particles through the subspace wave condenser. He just went down to engineering, pressed a few buttons and farking did it.

Confabulat:AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

khhsdude:Confabulat: AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

Confabulat:AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

The Doctor and Seven were good enough to make some episodes of Voyager enjoyable. The rest of the cast, not so much.

I can't speak to Enterprise, since I still haven't taken the time to watch it yet. I stopped part way through the first season when it first aired. It's on my list of things to watch, now that it's on Netflix.

MusicMakeMyHeadPound:It's just slightly annoying to me that every sci-fi movie, tv show and videogame thereafter treats space battles like tallship skirmishes.

I seem to recall the space battles in Babylon 5 being pretty good about not just doing nose-to-nose face offs but it has been a while since I watched the show. In general though I think much of the problem is that it's confusing to audiences to set up battles in a way that they aren't use to. So directors take the easy, and probably smart, way out in order to make the movie/tv show accessible to a general audience.

EngineerAU:MusicMakeMyHeadPound: It's just slightly annoying to me that every sci-fi movie, tv show and videogame thereafter treats space battles like tallship skirmishes.

I seem to recall the space battles in Babylon 5 being pretty good about not just doing nose-to-nose face offs but it has been a while since I watched the show. In general though I think much of the problem is that it's confusing to audiences to set up battles in a way that they aren't use to. So directors take the easy, and probably smart, way out in order to make the movie/tv show accessible to a general audience.

That's the only real explanation. It's also why the bridge is in the worst possible location on most Federation ships. Everything is running on instruments. The bridge should be centrally located to better protect it, like the Enterprise-D battle bridge. Having it top and center of the saucer is just too tempting a target.

NeoCortex42:EngineerAU: MusicMakeMyHeadPound: It's just slightly annoying to me that every sci-fi movie, tv show and videogame thereafter treats space battles like tallship skirmishes.

I seem to recall the space battles in Babylon 5 being pretty good about not just doing nose-to-nose face offs but it has been a while since I watched the show. In general though I think much of the problem is that it's confusing to audiences to set up battles in a way that they aren't use to. So directors take the easy, and probably smart, way out in order to make the movie/tv show accessible to a general audience.

That's the only real explanation. It's also why the bridge is in the worst possible location on most Federation ships. Everything is running on instruments. The bridge should be centrally located to better protect it, like the Enterprise-D battle bridge. Having it top and center of the saucer is just too tempting a target.

Well, here's the other lasting legacy of Khan: Star Trek was never meant to be about military adventurism, but the exciting box office sales made it start leaning that way. This is even more hilarious with the TNG movies in which Patrick Stewart stops playing the scholarly diplomat of Picard and instead goes full Bruce Willis. Because that shiat sells.

The bridge was placed for maximum observation. They're explorers. In the original show the weapons would never work as a way of showing that the characters had to think their way out of a situation.

"Balance of Terror", one of the best TOS episodes, definitely was a military adventure. Overall, I agree: Star Trek is at its best when it's about exploration and discovery. But that doesn't translate well to movies, and without some careful editing and direction, it doesn't work so great on TV either.

But you do hit upon why I hate First Contact. While it's the only TNG-era film that actually holds together as a movie and creates something watchable, it's so contrary to everything I know and love about Star Trek that I simply can't take it.

TWOK my add a lot of military adventure, but at its core, it's still a story about discovery; the MacGuffin that drives the plot is a discovery built by human genius that gives us the awesome power to reshape worlds- and we have to choose between using it to create or using it to destroy. That's a very Star Trek theme. It's why TWOK works as Star Trek while the equally action-oriented First Contact doesn't.

It's also why The Search For Spock is a little rough- the writers backpedal on the power of the Genesis device.

I seem to recall the space battles in Babylon 5 being pretty good about not just doing nose-to-nose face offs but it has been a while since I watched the show. In general though I think much of the problem is that it's confusing to audiences to set up battles in a way that they aren't use to. So directors take the easy, and probably smart, way out in order to make the movie/tv show accessible to a general audience.

That's the only real explanation. It's also why the bridge is in the worst possible location on most Federation ships. Everything is running on instruments. The bridge should be centrally located to better protect it, like the Enterprise-D battle bridge. Having it top and center of the saucer is just too tempting a target.

Well, here's the other lasting legacy of Khan: Star Trek was never meant to be about military adventurism, but the exciting box office sales made it start leaning that way. This is even more hilarious with the TNG movies in which Patrick Stewart stops playing the scholarly diplomat of Picard and instead goes full Bruce Willis. Because that shiat sells.

The bridge was placed for maximum observation. They're explorers. In the original show the weapons would never work as a way of showing that the characters had to think their way out of a situation.

Roddenberry was a hippie who was excited by NASA.

But the location of the bridge never actually aided them in observation since they only had instruments and the viewscreen to go off of. It would be different if they had a guy sitting in a chair towards the ceiling looking out the window.

Come to think of it, with all the windows on those ships, they really should have made better use of them for navigating/targeting during all those times when nebulae screwed with the sensors. I think the only time they did anything like that was when the sent Geordi to look out the window in Ten Forward with his VISOR.

MusicMakeMyHeadPound:And that was the "ace in the hole" of Khan: Spock telling Kirk "We're in space, dummy". That was how they defeated the supergenius.

Nope. They defeated the supergenius by playing on his overconfidence and belief that they were ignorant and weak ("Shields up captain?", "not so hurt as we were lead to believe"), their knowledge of the local terrain and it's effect on the ship gleaned from doing their job for decades (nebula and effect on shields, sensor and manuver), and then by predicting how he would behave because he was unfamiliar with space combat given that technology - no matter how smart he was. The last is a classic experience vs. intelligence screwup.

If you are going to pull apart the tactics you need to look at what brought them to the last point as well as the point itself because it wouldn't have worked unless each step before worked as well. Of course Kahn's overconfidence was no doubt inspired by the colossal stupidity of not raising shields when no communications were possible.

Confabulat:AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

Well other folks have mentioned the Doctor and Seven for Voyager. Enterprise made an attempt at making some of the characters interesting, and they almost managed it with Tits Mclogic, but the rest of the cast only had brief moments. And honestly, TNG only really had one interesting regular character, Data. Captain Baldy was a pompous Dudley Doright. Riker was Kirk 2.0 without the rebellious streak. LaForge was techie plot crutch. Troi was absolutely worthless as anything except eyecandy. Worf was the muscle meant only to show how tough the bad guy was. The vast majority of the characters had almost no growth. I liked the show at the time, but as I go back now and watch TNG again I realize that it kinda sucked.

Dingleberry Dickwad:Confabulat: AdamK: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

if only the star trek reboot had interesting characters...

It does. Reboot Spock is a wild card. Reboot Kirk is still Kirk. Reboot Bones is great and I hope he gets more screen time this time around.

Name one character from Voyager or Enterprise that is half as interesting. I'll give you Deep Space Nine and call it even on TNG.

Well other folks have mentioned the Doctor and Seven for Voyager. Enterprise made an attempt at making some of the characters interesting, and they almost managed it with Tits Mclogic, but the rest of the cast only had brief moments. And honestly, TNG only really had one interesting regular character, Data. Captain Baldy was a pompous Dudley Doright. Riker was Kirk 2.0 without the rebellious streak. LaForge was techie plot crutch. Troi was absolutely worthless as anything except eyecandy. Worf was the muscle meant only to show how tough the bad guy was. The vast majority of the characters had almost no growth. I liked the show at the time, but as I go back now and watch TNG again I realize that it kinda sucked.

Worf was much improved once he moved on to DS9. His TNG character was basically reduced to "get knocked out by alien to show that alien is really strong". Picard had some good character episodes, particularly his post-Borg family visit. Other than that, Data was probably the only fully-realized character. They tried several times with Geordi trying to find love or something, but it just never worked.

TWOK works for precisely the reason that Star Trek TOS works -- they're about telling the story of three main characters amidst adventure backdrops. James T. Kirk is fascinating not because he's an old movie-serial hero, but because he's smart, he's a team player, he's in control and he excels at spotting weaknesses. His weaknesses are offset by his willingness to rely on others. He's essentially the space age version of Odysseus.

Spock is the personification of empiricism and reason, but is made interesting by having to grapple with emotions that he struggles to control. Bones, by contrast, is a cranky pragmatist who reacts emotionally to everything despite his training in science and medicine. Both Bones and Spock lack the capability to lead others.

Kirk, Spock and Bones each have complimentary characteristics and can serve as perfect foils against each other. Spock and Bones also serve as the compass to Kirk, who often needs to rely on both of them to effectively get through a crisis. (Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty and Uhura, on the other hand, are caricatures who remain in the background until they're needed, and while they're occasionally allowed to be characters in the story, their adventures are rarely about what makes them unique as people and more about placing them in the peril of the week situation.)

That's exactly why the JJ Abrams film irritated some fans, incidentally - it turned all seven of the characters into angsty, boiled-over caricatures based upon decades worth of cultural accumulation and then embedded them into an incredibly stupid plot that felt more like Star Wars than Star Trek.

It's also the reason that TWOK works so well. You don't have to know anything about Star Trek to enjoy the film, but you'll leave it feel like you just had a rich experience and that you owe it to yourself to find out more. Unlike some of the other Trek films which are closer to the original series in plot (as dreadful as I and V are, their stories are much more true to the weekly show), TWOK focuses on taking these very interesting characters, putting them in an escalating situation and playing things out to an exciting endgame.

I also set my DVR to record the once-a-week rerun of the retro-upgraded Original Series on cable.

I don't know why anyone would want to watch those. Much of the charm in TOS comes from its era and working with what they had. If you want to see smoother effects or set pieces there are many, many newer things to watch. A lot of them also happen to be Star Trek.

secularsage:It's also the reason that TWOK works so well. You don't have to know anything about Star Trek to enjoy the film, but you'll leave it feel like you just had a rich experience and that you owe it to yourself to find out more. Unlike some of the other Trek films which are closer to the original series in plot (as dreadful as I and V are, their stories are much more true to the weekly show), TWOK focuses on taking these very interesting characters, putting them in an escalating situation and playing things out to an exciting endgame.

I rewatched it a few months ago and was pleasantly surprised that it holds up well as a film, not just a sci-fi flick. Plus, you have some not-so-subtle tweaks at Kirk as he was originally portrayed. The youthful hotshot who banged green-skinned ladies from here to Arcturus finds he now needs glasses to see the fark trophy who thinks he's just another entitled authority figure flying a desk.

The Undiscovered Country is my favorite. That's probably an unpopular decision, but "the Berlin wall comes down in space" is just a perfect fit for the time when it was made, and the Klingons choosing Kirk, of all people, to make their peace offer to, is just brilliant, especially when everything inevitably goes horribly wrong, because who better to put in a position of having to save the peace than the guy who wants it least?

As a fan of TNG when it originally aired, whenever I happen across a rerun on TV, I kind of sit back and realize it did not age very well...and agree that in hindsight that all of the characters we kind of lacking. In the end, the characters that I liked the most were Guinan and Pulaski...both of which were kind of temporary characters.

On the other hand, thanks to netflix, I'm finding that DS9 holds up quite well, and almost all of the characters interesting, if only due to the fact that they are almost all designed to work AGAINST each other, instead of the well oiled machine where everyone works together on TNG.

Confabulat:FirstNationalBastard: Confabulat: About time someone figured out Star Trek was always about the characters, not Geordi Laforges bullshiat 5-second explanation on how to get out of this mess we'll all forget about next week.

JJ Abrams has it right.

You're funny.

Aw, are you still mad people like new Star Trek?

No we don't give a f*ck if you like Star Trek: A Generic Space Movie. The reason why we hate it is because it's bland, generic and mediocre at best. The only reason why it got 95% on the RT meter. Is because the producers ran a junket on it and gathered the usual boot lickers. Does anyone here actually believe the ST:AGSM is better than The Wrath of Khan, Voyage home and Undiscovered Country?

Freschel:I haven't seen Nemesis, yet. Not going out of my way to see it.

It's remarkable how similar Shinzon, the villain in Nemesis, is to Nero, the villain in Star Trek '09. To basically reheat the antagonist from the film that put the franchise in a coma and hope that carries your big-budget reboot is a baffling move. I guess they calculated that Nemesis failed because people didn't go see it, not because people saw it.